Having done all the numbers on how much we could borrow to purchase our first home in Australia and being pretty excited about how much we could save in interest if we were disciplined and made extra payments to our home loan, we started seriously looking for our first home. We were first home buyers!
We were confident we could find our first home in a suburb of Sydney that we liked. Before we started really looking though, we checked out websites that gave us information on property values and trends in the suburbs that were on our short list. This reassured us because the suburbs we were considering for our first home all showed good future capital growth. For s small cost we could even get a background report on the area, the average purchase price / value of property there and even last sale price on a particular property.
We started reading the Sydney Morning Herald property section and also checked out the Southern Courier and local newspapers in southern Sydney. This gave us a wide range of properties. We went on the internet and got in touch with a few local real estate agents. We chose one we really liked and they were a great help in filtering properties that came on to the market within their area. They knew we were first home buyers and really looked after us.
We were very keen to become first home buyers and having researched the market and really utilised the mortgage calculators that are available on the internet, we were quite confident that we would qualify for a loan of $500,000.
We decided however, that it was a good idea to get a pre approval for the finance before we started attending auctions or negotiating with any vendors. We got our finance through a mortgage manager – we found their service to be very professional and the staff was friendly and helpful – and always accessible. We didn’t have to press 1, 2, 3 to talk to someone. The company we used also had a First Home Buyer Club which gave us some terrific tips and benefits - including a “home goods pack” at settlement (we bought a fantastic dishwasher!).
The real estate agent had said we would be negotiating from a stronger position on the home price once we had a pre approval in place. We did find that once vendors knew we had finance approved they were prepared to talk more seriously on the price.
The contracts for purchase of your first home are usually standard and approved so the terms and conditions in them are generally OK. Even so it is best to have a solicitor act for you on the purchase. It is probably the biggest investment you will ever make so why not pay a fee to have an expert look over the contract and your proposed mortgage documentation to make sure that everything is in order and as you understand it to be. We looked around for 3 months before we found a house we both really liked and guess what – we moved in last week!
Vicky Edema has been the Managing Director of Austral Mortgage Corporation since 1992,
the company specialised in first home buyer loan.
Austral's first home buyer club provide many benefits for Australian
first home buyer.
Austral URL: http://www.australmortgage.com.au
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